In this series, we look through the most recent Dividend Channel ''DividendRank'' report, and then we cherry pick only those companies that have experienced insider buying within the past six months. The officers and directors of a company tend to have a unique insider's view of the business, and presumably the only reason an insider would choose to take their hard-earned cash and use it to buy stock in the open market, is that they expect to make money — maybe they find the stock very undervalued, or maybe they see exciting progress within the company, or maybe both.

The most recent short interest data has been released for the 11/30/2017 settlement date, which shows a 574,666 share increase in total short interest for MFA Financial, Inc. , to 6,298,338, an increase of 10.04% since 11/15/2017.

The most recent short interest data was recently released by the NASDAQ for the 10/30/2015 settlement date, and MFA Financial, Inc. is one of the most shorted stocks of the Russell 3000, based on 7.98 "days to cover" versus the median component at 5.62.